{"id":444431,"date":"2010-03-18T11:17:51","date_gmt":"2010-03-18T15:17:51","guid":{"rendered":"tag:blogs.courant.com,2010:\/capitol_watch\/\/9.74170"},"modified":"2010-03-18T12:19:46","modified_gmt":"2010-03-18T16:19:46","slug":"simulated-rape-as-entertainment-unconscionable-says-woman-who-works-with-convicted-sex-offenders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/444431","title":{"rendered":"Simulated rape as entertainment? “Unconscionable” says woman who works with convicted sex offenders"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s a widening gender gap <\/a>among Republican U.S. Senate candidates Linda McMahon and Rob Simmons but don’t count Eileen Redden among the former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO’s female fans.<\/p>\n

Redden, who has worked with convicted sex offenders for two decades, is deeply troubled by the violent and sexually explicit content once promoted by WWE. And she believes McMahon the candidate ought to answer for the excesses overseen by McMahon the CEO.<\/p>\n

“Linda McMahon promotes violence against women and sexual abuse – as reflected in her [WWE] sextertainment,” Redden said. “She is a dangerous candidate.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Redden has studied the link between viewing sexually exploitative material and sexual aggression; she said she finds it deeply troubling that 13-year-old boys are being exposed to such programming.<\/p>\n

“It’s not entertainment,” Redden said in a phone interview. “It’s highly dangerous to an impressionable adolescent male brain.”<\/p>\n

She said she finds WWE’s simulated rape scenes “unconscionable.”<\/p>\n

That view, incidentally, was shared by participants in a focus group convened by the Simmons campaign. Voters were shown WWE video and asked to comment. They used words such as “sick,” “perverted,” “terrible” and “disgusting,” according to a summary of the focus group findings provided by the Simmons camp. (By the way, Redden did not participate in these focus groups. She has no affiliation with the Simmon campaign and said she decided to conact me only after reading the article about McMahon’s popularity with women.) <\/p>\n

WWE says criticism of its content is misplaced: while raunch and violence may have dominated in the 1990s, the new WWE produces PG-rated entertainment suitable for the whole family. (The change appears to have been driven less by a concern over the impact of its shows on young minds and more by the demands of advertisers<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

McMahon herself addressed the issue in an early campaign video. WWE content used to be rated TV-14 (“parents caution stronly urged); now its TV-PG (“parental guidance suggested.”)<\/p>\n

<\/embed> <\/p>\n

  “It’s fun, it has something for everyone within the show,” McMahon said. “It’s energetic, it’s entertaining, it’s music, it’s pyro, it’s pomp and circumstance. It’s what keeps people interested in the product.”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Redden said she can think of plenty of other forms of “entertainment.”<\/p>\n

“If she wanted to entertain children, she could have built baseball parks,” she said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a widening gender gap among Republican U.S. Senate candidates Linda McMahon and Rob Simmons but don’t count Eileen Redden among the former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO’s female fans. Redden, who has worked with convicted sex offenders for two decades, is deeply troubled by the violent and sexually explicit content once promoted by WWE. And she believes McMahon the candidate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4000,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-444431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4000"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444431\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}